This course will map key intersections of German studies and globalization, and draw on multiple disciplines to pursue the question of how we understand the global, and where we situate both ourselves and the cultural texts/objects we study within increasingly interdisciplinary environments. The course is divided into four thematic units: the first will introduce basic terms, and map the connections and disjunctions between modernity and globalization, paying attention to the German perspective, as well as the particular discussions of culture and globalization. The second examines the comparative history of genocide, the globalization of holocaust discourse, and the emergence of a global human rights regime that developed out of the study of genocides. Unit three considers what the legacies of workers’ movements and Marxist theory might be for a world after socialism, and whether a communist notion of the ‘multitude’ can intervene in and remake a pernicious global “empire” without center. The fourth unit looks at the way in which notions of gender must be reconceptualized both in response to global restructuring, and to the appropriation of traditional ciphers of femininity and masculinity in virtual media.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

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